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107Material implication and general indicative conditionalsPhilosophical Quarterly 47 (187): 195-211. 1997.This paper falls into two parts. In the first part, I argue that consideration of general indicative conditionals, e.g., sentences like If a donkey brays it is beaten, provides a powerful argument that a pure material implication analysis of indicative if p, q is correct. In the second part I argue, opposing writers like Jackson, that a Gricean style theory of pragmatics can explain the manifest assertability conditions of if p, q in terms of its conventional content – assumed to be merely (p⊃q)…Read more
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101Renewing meaning: a speech-act theoretic approachClarendon Press. 2004.This book develops an alternative approach to sentence- and word-meaning, which I dub the speech-act theoretic approach, or STA. Instead of employing the syntactic and semantic forms of modern logic–principally, quantification theory–to construct semantic theories, STA employs speech-act structures. The structures it employs are those postulated by a novel theory of speech-acts. STA develops a compositional semantics in which surface grammar is integrated with semantic interpretation in a way no…Read more
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100Troubles with Horgan and Timmons' nondescriptivist cognitivismGrazer Philosophische Studien 63 (1): 235-255. 2002.Emotivist, or non-descriptivist metaethical theories hold that value-statements do not function by describing special value-facts, but are the mere expressions of naturalistically describable motivational states of (valuing) agents. Non-descriptivism has typically been combined with the claim that value-statements are non-cognitive: they are not the manifestations of genuine belief states. However, all the linguistic, logical and phenomenological evidence indicates that value-statements are cogn…Read more
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94E-type pronouns, DRT, dynamic semantics and the quantifier/variable-binding modelLinguistics and Philosophy 20 (2): 195-228. 1997.
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92Figurative Speech: Pointing a Poisoned Arrow at the Heart of SemanticsPhilosophical Studies 174 (1): 123-140. 2017.I argue that figurative speech, and irony in particular, presents a deep challenge to the orthodox view about sentence content. The standard view is that sentence contents are, at their core, propositional contents: truth-conditional contents. Moreover, the only component of a sentence’s content that embeds in compound sentences, like belief reports or conditionals, is the propositional content. I argue that a careful analysis of irony shows this view cannot be maintained. Irony is a purely prag…Read more
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75The consequent-entailment problem foreven ifLinguistics and Philosophy 17 (3). 1994.A comprehensive theory ofeven if needs to account for consequent ‘entailing’even ifs and in particular those of theif-focused variety. This is where the theory ofeven if ceases to be neutral between conditional theories. I have argued thatif-focusedeven ifs,especially if andonly if can only be accounted for through the suppositional theory ofif. Furthermore, a particular interpretation of this theory — the conditional assertion theory — is needed to account foronly if and a type of metalinguisti…Read more
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68Truth-Making and the Alethic Undecidability of the LiarDiscusiones Filosóficas 13 (21): 13-31. 2012.I argue that a new solution to the semantic paradoxes is possible based on truth-making. I show that with an appropriate understanding of what the ultimate truth and falsity makers of sentences are, it can be demonstrated that sentences like the liar are alethically undecidable. That means it cannot be said in principle whether such sentences are true, not true, false, not-false, neither true nor false, both true and false, and so on. I argue that this leads to a solution to the semantic paradox…Read more
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60PET imaging of conscious and unconscious verbal memoryJournal of Consciousness Studies 3 (5-6): 448-62. 1996.One method for investigating the neurobiology of consciousness is to experimentally manipulate consciousness as a variable and then visualize the resultant functional brain changes with advanced imaging techniques. To begin investigation into this area, healthy volunteers underwent positron emission tomography scanning while listening to randomized word lists in both conscious and unconscious conditions. Following anaesthesia, subjects had no explicit memories. Nonetheless, subjects demonstrated…Read more
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47The Experiential Thesis: Audi on Intrinsic ValueSouthern Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1): 57-61. 2003.
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23Hybrid Theories of Moral StatementsIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.Hybrid theories are metaethical theories concerning the content of sentences about moral value. These theories claim that sentences with ethical content express two kinds of mental state. One state is an affect‐like state. The other is a belief‐like state. The expressed affect‐like state will involve a moral attitude of some kind, such as approval, but it is not part of the truth‐conditions of the sentence. We can divide hybridists into two kinds.
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22Indefinite Descriptions as Referring TermsOrganon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 16 (4): 569-586. 2009.I argue that indefinite descriptions are referring terms. This is not the ambiguity thesis: that sometimes they are referring terms and sometimes something else, such as quantifiers . No. On my view they are always referring terms; and never quantifiers. I defend this thesis by modifying the standard conception of what a referring term is: a modification that needs to be made anyway, irrespective of the treatment of indefinites. I derive this approach from my speech-act theoretic semantics . The…Read more
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21The Experiential Thesis: Audi on Intrinsic ValueSouthern Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1): 57-61. 2003.
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17Autoaesthetics: Strategies of the Self after NietzscheHumanities Press. 1992.Combining a Nietzschean framework with close attention to a wide range of carefully selected literary texts, Autoaesthetics presents a case for Nietzche's centrality in contemporary aesthetic and literary studies. Based on Nietzche's own practice of combining poetry and philosophy by transcending ressentiment and approaching life to its fullest, Autoaesthetics engages in a heated but intricate debate through and with Nietzche's re-articulation of the self as a strategic (and impossible) aestheti…Read more
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15Hume's Causal Explanation of Causal ThinkingSouthwest Philosophical Studies 10 (3): 21-28. 1988.
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11The Experiential Thesis: Audi on Intrinsic ValueSouthern Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1): 57-61. 2003.
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2Leaving Things to Take their Chances: Cause and Disposition Grounded in ChanceIn Toby Handfield (ed.), Dispositions and Causes, Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press ;. pp. 100-126. 2009.
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2Freedom from Social SciencePhilosophie Et Culture: Actes du XVIIe Congrès Mondial de Philosophie 2 549-553. 1988.
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1The Mirror and the DaggerIn Steve Martinot (ed.), Maps and mirrors: topologies of art and politics, Northwestern University Press. pp. 83. 2001.
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Analysing chancy causation without appeal to chance-raisingIn Phil Dowe & Paul Noordhof (eds.), Cause and Chance: Causation in an Indeterministic World, Routledge. 2003.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |